Hybrid Car Tax Deduction

[JohnnyD 0]

If you drive one, or know someone that does, check into it. It goes back to 2000 for some cars.

[billvon 2,400]

For more info:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-news/ir-02-97.pdf

[Muenkel 0]

Bill,

Not being a techno person, what do you know about the hydrogen powered cars Pres. Bush was referring to last night? Are they truly feasible and do you think they will be extremely expensive?

Chris

_________________________________________
Chris

[CrazyIvan 0]

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Bill,

Not being a techno person, what do you know about the hydrogen powered cars Pres. Bush was referring to last night? Are they truly feasible and do you think they will be extremely expensive?

Chris

Actually, they will be cheap, when the technology to obtain HYDROGEN out of air comes true.

Hydrogen is in abundant quantities in the atmosphere, the trick is to seperate it from the air.

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[diverdriver 5]

I say let's get off the "oil standard". Let's make the hydrogen fuel from plants powered by solar power and then make the rest of the world buy OUR fuel. Then we run an embargo and see how they like it. Yah, yah,.....if I was president.

I think it totally can be done. We just have to decide to do it and spend the money on R&D. We figured out how to put man on the moon we can certainly figure out the infrastructure to use fuel cell technology here. We just have to decide to do it. I think the President should challenge our scientists like Kennedy challenged them to put man on the moon. They should have a goal of making fuel cell technology a reality by the end of the decade. That would be a worthy goal.

[diverdriver 5]

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Actually, they will be cheap, when the technology to obtain HYDROGEN out of air comes true.

Hydrogen is in abundant quantities in the atmosphere, the trick is to seperate it from the air.

Actually, I believe you can extract it from sea water the best. If my memory serves me right.

[dave610 0]

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atmosphere, the trick is to seperate it from the air.

The process of producing Hydrogen gas is to separate the Hydrogen and Oxygen of water molecules, H2O, with electrolosis. it is a rather simple process. The only by product is Oxygen.
The only hold up is the Oil industry controlled Gov't and Auto industry.

[CrazyIvan 0]

Dude, that could be done DECADES ago, I mean c'mon, we can build nukes and satellites and space probes and stuff but we are UNABLE to build a NON-GASOLINE vehicle? YEAH RIGHT, the answer is one MONEY and CORPORATION MAFIA, yes sir, think about it, imagine you are a gas station owner and someone says to you, Hey Charlie, help me build a hydrogen-based automobile...get the picture?

If I was president, the oil companies would put a hit on me.

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[happythoughts 0]

Actually, if you are a gas station owner and someone says "We have a process to produce fuel using water and electricity. No wholesaler, no deliveries, no EPA study..." It is very attractive. The problem right now is (1) public perception (read Hindenburg disaster) and (2) no buyers.

[Sebazz1 2]

Do we get a tax deduction on Hybrid Skydives? We get to write those jumps off right?

[billvon 2,400]

>Not being a techno person, what do you know about the hydrogen
> powered cars Pres. Bush was referring to last night? Are they truly
> feasible and do you think they will be extremely expensive?

Not sure what to make of that. They are relatively easy to build; several car companies already have prototypes, there are fuel cell powered buses, and even Coleman is now selling portable fuel cells for emergency/remote power. Given that, his comment "a child born today may someday drive one" is a little odd, sort of like saying "a child born today may, in 20 years, jump a 69 sq ft elliptical canopy."

The problem is getting the hydrogen. We don't have any sources. We can make it from natural gas; but if that's your objective, why not just run the car on natural gas? NG is safer and easier to store, and we already have cars (like the Honda Civic GX) that run on natural gas. You get the same amount of pollution both ways (mainly CO2.) We can make it from oil, but then that sorta defeats the purpose. We can make it from solar (or wind) power and water, but that whole process is about 3% efficient, compared to 15-20% efficiency of a gas powered car. A pure electric vehicle would be way more efficient, and with a removable/rentable Coleman generator, would have as much range as a gas car.

We could also make hydrogen from high temperature dissociation of water in a nuclear reactor, but I don't see that happening anytime soon, since you can't do it in any of our standard PWR/BWR reactor designs.

So I was happy to see him looking at alternatives to oil, but I can't see that hydrogen fuel cells are the way to go, at least until we make other big changes (like building new reactor types or putting up a lot more wind/solar.)

[happythoughts 0]

Quote

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atmosphere, the trick is to seperate it from the air.

The process of producing Hydrogen gas is to separate the Hydrogen and Oxygen of water molecules, H2O, with electrolosis. it is a rather simple process. The only by product is Oxygen.
The only hold up is the Oil industry controlled Gov't and Auto industry.

The best method is converting sea water using electricity.

The problem was producing the electricity. Everyone thought that nuclear fusion would give us an inexhaustible supply and that hasn't happened. Solar power doesn't produce the volume of electricity to make it work feasibly. It takes acres of land to produce good amounts.

Cheap electricity is the stumbling block. Imagine that every gas station owner in the country can produce fuel from a water main. Very enticing.

[Muenkel 0]

Thanks Bill.

Physics was not my strongest of subjects and I truly did not understand the process.

Chris

_________________________________________
Chris

[billvon 2,400]

>Actually, if you are a gas station owner and someone says "We have
> a process to produce fuel using water and electricity. No wholesaler,
> no deliveries, no EPA study..." It is very attractive.

Except that currently you'd need around $180 in electricity (2600 kilowatt hours) to make the equivalent of a tankful of gasoline, plus the upgrades to the power supply to get him enough power to do it on a continuous basis. Not sure how a gas station owner would make that competitive with gasoline, unless it got much, much more expensive, or electrolysis got much more efficient, or power got much cheaper (or all three.) He might have better luck turning natural gas into hydrogen, but I don't have a way to do a costing on that yet. In any case, a natural gas fueled station that sold natural gas would be a lot more cost effective than a natural gas staion that sold hydrogen.

Note that natural gas can be burned directly by a NG car like the Honda GX or can be sent through a reformer to extract hydrogen and run a fuel cell. Several hydrogen fuel cell vehicles do this now. Methanol is another good source for hydrogen, and is an easily transported liquid. Unfortunately we don't have any good sources for it yet either.

Here are some links:
http://www.fcvshowroom.com/GmFirstGas.htm
http://www.amo-automotive.com/amo/articles/nissan_fuel_cell_activities
http://www.ford.com/en/ourCompany/environmentalInitiatives/sustainableMobilityTechnologies/fuelcells.htm

[goose491 0]

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So I was happy to see him looking at alternatives to oil, but I can't see that hydrogen fuel cells are the way to go, at least until we make other big changes (like building new reactor types or putting up a lot more wind/solar.)

Agreed, I remember reading an article by BMW -who have one of the most successful prototypes of hydrogen motor. They stated the US gov't had been considering (and to my surprise, have not yet thrown out) the concept of covering many many square miles of the desert with Solar Panels. At 3% efficiency -as you have pointed out- this may not yeild much but as production methods got better... who knows right? And It couldn't hurt to have an abundance of solar power I guess.

My Karma ran over my Dogma!!!

[dave610 0]

Not being an engineer..separating water into H2 and O2 with electricity seems simple but how do you separate the two gases?
I can see how mass production of H2 gas will have many issues to solve.
Also, H2 gas requires O2 to be supplied for it to burn, so O2 would also be needed to make a H2 burning engine to work. H2 burns at a very high ambiant temperature, that takes very tough engine or an effective cooling system, not using water, H2 and water bad combination. Water would be the exhaust created however.
damn, i should have stayed an engineering major.

[jfields 0]

There are a lot of various fuel cell technologies out there right now. The whole industry is still in its infancy right now. Some big specific players are:

Ballard Power Systems
FuelCell Energy, Inc.
Millennium Cell, Inc.
H Power Corp.
Plug Power, Inc.

Of course, conglomerates like GE and 3M are working on it also.

I agree with you that right now it is alternative fuels used in fuel cells that provides the best option. The systems are more flexible, and have less supply problems than straight hydrogen systems.

Shocked that I'm talking about something other than gun control and boobies?

[billvon 2,400]

>separating water into H2 and O2 with electricity seems simple but
> how do you separate the two gases?

Hydrogen collects on one terminal of the cell, oxygen on the other. Simple plumbing then keeps the two separate.

Here and here are instructions for making your own electrolyzers if you wanted to do that; gives a good insight into the process.

>Also, H2 gas requires O2 to be supplied for it to burn, so O2 would
> also be needed to make a H2 burning engine to work.

Same issue as a gas engine. Fortunately there's plenty of it in the air.

>H2 burns at a very high ambiant temperature, that takes very tough
>engine or an effective cooling system, not using water, H2 and water
> bad combination.

Agreed, but most people who advocate use of hydrogen as a motor fuel advocate the use of fuel cells rather than combustion to drive the car. Fuel cells don't have the same temperature problems.

[diverdriver 5]

Is anyone pushing for more efficient solar panels? Covering the desert sounds good to me. I mean....who really ever jumps at Eloy. Would we miss it? (just kidding folks, don't throw rocks at me or anything)

[happythoughts 0]

Bill, I agree with you. I was responding to this:

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yes sir, think about it, imagine you are a gas station owner and someone says to you, Hey Charlie, help me build a hydrogen-based automobile.

I was trying to say that a gas station owner would not be threatened by the switch to hydrogen. It would be a different product in the same business.

The methanol reformers seem to produce 20-30% of the pollutants that gas cars do. I don't know that the composition of the pollutants is.

Everyone seems to compare the benefit of smaller pollution to the effort/inconvenience of using methanol and don't want to deal with it. The all-or-nothing mindset seems to be stance with little acceptance for partial improvements.

Considering the limited range and their special fueling needs, the only group with a central fueling station and limited range are buses and govt vehicles. I think it is great that the govt is giving the option an evaluation.

[happythoughts 0]

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Is anyone pushing for more efficient solar panels? Covering the desert sounds good to me. I mean....who really ever jumps at Eloy. Would we miss it? (just kidding folks, don't throw rocks at me or anything)

I can't quote you the exact figures without looking it up, but we covered it in physics in college. Even if you improve efficiency in solar cells to 95%, the energy input from an acre of sunlight isn't as large as people think.

[jfields 0]

Poluting or not, the power density of hydrocarbon-based fuels is pretty high.

>

[billvon 2,400]

>Is anyone pushing for more efficient solar panels?

Yep. Commerical panels are around 14% now. Space grade cells are around 30% and are hideously expensive, research underway now may push that to 50%. That will be pretty close to theoretical limits even for multijunction devices.

>Even if you improve efficiency in solar cells to 95%, the energy input
> from an acre of sunlight isn't as large as people think.

At 95%, you'd get 413kW from an acre of panels, enough to run 496,000 typical US houses - at least during the day. If you average the power over the course of a day you could run 100,000 houses. With ten acres you could run all of San Diego; you could do that by just covering all parking lots with panels.

[happythoughts 0]

I was interested in how much it would cost to run one house on solar panels. At How Stuff Works there is a page that explains it.

The estimated panel size was 17ft by 17ft for one house and incredibly expensive with current technology. Perhaps the new stuff will replace the old solar-thermal technology used in large scale plants today.

[billvon 2,400]

>I was interested in how much it would cost to run one house on solar
>panels. At How Stuff Works there is a page that explains it.

Well let's see. I use about 4-5 kwhr/day, and to supply that would take me around $5000 in parts. Add another $5000 in labor if you have someone else do it. It would require 100 sq ft of panels, or 6 185 watt modules, to break even over the course of a year, assuming current technology.

Of course, that's after a lot of conservation. I use compact flourescents everywhere, a really efficient washing machine, and gas for heat and cooking. It's a saying in the PV industry that it takes $100 in panels to avoid spending $10 on a new light bulb, so it's generally cost effective to reduce your consumption first, then go solar.